Management Tips by Harvard Business Review offers some
important advice for managers. The book is small but gives strong advice and
explanations on how to become a better manager. It is something that you put on
the shelf and refer to the key principles of management when needed. It is broken
into managing yourself, managing your team and managing your business. You can
zoom through the book in a few hours.
You may be interested in a few tips:
Listen: Listening
is a skill that is learned over time. Truly listening means to try and
understand what another person is saying and why they are saying it. You can
determine a lot about the person, their goals, their motivations, and their
personalities simply by listening. The book encourages readers to think about
the conversation and try and understand where it is headed.
Be Confident-But Not
Really Sure: Having a strong opinion is a sign of confidence but being so
sure about that opinion is mental weakness. The point is that opinions should
be adjusted and changed depending on the information that is available and the
feedback you get from others to make them more accurate. Ignorance is based
upon opinions that are unyielding to the realities of the environment.
Battle Change Resistance: People are naturally resistant to change if
only because it is not the way in which they view the problem and often don’t
want to put forward the effort to make change. Ensure that you are using the
facts/research, know their arguments, and provide them with the big picture. This
helps others see the need for change and to have some ability to formalize the
possibilities.
Management is not easy but if you haven’t thought about how
much of management is working with others and guiding them to higher levels of
performance you are missing the big picture yourself. Management requires
learning the proper skills and developing them in the context of others.
Managers are influencers and should ensure that they have developed the right
social, strategic, and personality resources to make things happen.
Management Tips by
Harvard Business Review. (2011). Boston,
MA: Harvard Business Review Press ISBN: 978-1-4221-5878